The Growth of Young George Washinton in Lord Fairfax's Wilderness Lands, author talk with Peter Stark

Two decades before he led America to independence, George Washington was a flailing young soldier serving the British Empire in the vast wilderness of Western Virginia and the Ohio Valley.  Naïve and self-absorbed, the twenty-two-year-old officer accidentally ignited the French and Indian War—a conflict that brought colonists to consider the possibility of an American Revolution against the British.

Based out of Winchester, Virginia, the British colonial officer endured wilderness exploits and hardship that would shape the great American leader he grew to become -- adventures recounted in Stark's book Young Washington.

Stark's talk at the Handley Library will focus on Washington's transformation, starting in the 1750s, from temperamental striver to mature leader and how the 5 million acres of Virginia wilderness possessed by Lord Fairfax provided fertile ground for Young George Washington to grow.